Americana

I had been having dreams of returning Kansas City Art Institute. The dreams were reoccurring, and when that happens I feel like I need to do something about it. So over the holidays I took a sentimental stroll through the KCAI campus. It was empty obviously because of the winter break, and the trees were bear because it’s winter. That, along with the fact that I was alone added to the melancholy of the visit. But it was interesting to see what had changed and what was the same. The book/supply store is now a cafe. The library is now the book/supply store. The painting building has been modernized. The strange sculptural addition to the railings in front of the dorms is still there, as is the spiral stone sculture that was built shortly after I graduated. Missing was the Dale Eldred sculpture which I thought would be there forever. But much of the campus looked exactly the same.

Click on the images and they should start appearing as a slide show of sorts. You can advance to the next with a little arrow that appears on the far right of the image when you roll over that area. About halfway through the pictures they repeat in cross-eye format. You can skip to any of the pictures by clicking the thumbnails here:

My brother who works at Ultimate Image screenprinting in Toledo Iowa, helped me out with some screenprinting for the new Paper Fleet record cover. He made the screen and showed me what to do, and I pumped out the 500 odd covers. Here’s a couple pics of that process. Oh, and Josh inman drew the art on the cover. Check out the final record here

I took a ton of photos in 3-D myself, so I figured out a better way to display them. Click on the images and they should start appearing as a slide show of sorts. You can advance to the next with a little arrow that appears on the far right of the image when you roll over that area. About halfway through the pictures they repeat in cross-eye format. You can skip to any of the pictures by clicking the thumbnails here:

Stereograph cards were the way 3D images were first introduced way back in the 1880s. To view them you had to have a stereo viewer like this. I have a few of these cards. So I thought I’d share a few scans of one of my favorite subjects, Theodore Roosevelt. Below you’ll see 3 versions of each. First the original, then the image converted to crosseye viewing, then an anaglyph for use with red/blue 3d glasses.

One more: This photo was obviously taken at the same time as the one above, but here John Muir has Joined him. There must be a stereograph card of this one out there as well, but this is the original uncropped photo from the Library of Congress. Except I colorized this one in photoshop.

NOW IT”S CRAFTY TIME!

If you have one of those old stereo viewers, you can print images from this site and make your own stereocards! follow these simple instructions:

1. find an image pair on this site and on it to get a larger file.

2 Drag it to your desktop and Print it out. (You’ll have to scale them to about 7 inches wide in a photo editing program or printer application to fit those viewers.)

3. Then you’ll generally have to flip them (put the left one on the right and right on the left). This is because I post most of these for cross eye vieweing and the stereo viewers work parallel. (The stereo cards above have been posted both crosseyed and parallel ways. The smaller images will be the ones you don’t have to flip.)

On any trip through South Dakota you have to stop at Wall Drug. These pictures were all taken using the “cha cha” method. In other words, not with a 3D camera but rather with a normal camera. One picture, then shifted over a couple inches, and another picture. This was before I had the Fuji 3D Camera and the View-Master Personal camera doesn’t do low light pictures so well.

Why must one stop in Wall, South Dakota? I think the pictures speak for themselves.
There. Isn’t that awesome? All that and “Free Ice water”. But wait there’s more.
This band is so awesome. I’m totally hiring them for my next clambake.
Lovely wood carved heroes of the old west sit and stand here and there. Here’s Annie Oaklie:
Wall Drug is a bit of a drive from Deadwood, but Wild Bill is a popular character in them parts.
The wax museum across the street (not affiliated with Wall Drug) also paid tribute to Wild Bill.
…as well as a many other western legends. The famous Indian who shot that one Buffalo:
The Duke and The Man With no Name:

I took some pictures with the View-Master camera too. maybe I’ll upload more one of these days.